


On Crystals, Character Building, and the True Meaning of Patience

by Mster70



Series: How (Not) to Fall in Love with your Jedi Training Partner [6]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: #1 Stubborn Engineer Rey, Alternate Universe, F/M, Jedi Ben Solo, Jedi Rey, Jedi Training, Light Angst, Lightsabers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-17
Updated: 2017-04-20
Packaged: 2018-10-19 22:32:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 9,591
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10649409
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mster70/pseuds/Mster70
Summary: Rey's been waiting to build her own lightsaber since she first came to the Jedi academy, wanting it more than she's wanted almost anything in her life. A deadly-beautiful weapon of her own custom design that she gets to engineer and build from the crystals up - it's the ultimate dream for that scrap-scrounger survivalist part of Rey, and one of the most significant feats the Jedi part of herself can achieve.She's ready to take on the task and dive in head first. Despite Luke's cautions, it can't possibly be too difficult to build a saber - can it?





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hooooh boy, this is a lot of lore right here, folks. Please forgive me if anything seems really “wrong” and feel free to point it out (kindly, if you will XD)! I mixed things from a lot of different sources here, taking things from the EU and canon and some of it is my own “canon” from this ‘verse as well.

The first time she brushes her fingertips against the two crystals nestled against each other in the crate, she knows they are _hers_. It jolts through her gut, ripples in the Force, and she sees the briefest flash color, almost blindingly bright in its intensity. A grin comes over her face, and she gingerly scoops the twin shards from the container she and Ben and brought back from Barseg.

They’re small, colorless, and just the tiniest bit irregular in their oblong, multi-faced shape. Both fit comfortably in the palm of one hand, and when she closes her fingers over them, she swears she can already feel the quiet thrum of energy under their glassy-smooth surface.

Already, schematics and diagrams are popping into her head. She’s been dreaming about this day for years now, when she’d finally be able to start building her own lightsaber. Excitement and anticipation buzz through her, and she has to stop and take a deep breath to keep her hands from shaking as she pulls out a scrap of cloth she’d brought with her and lovingly wraps up the two kyber crystals before pocketing them.

She’s nearly vibrating with excess energy as she walks out of the hangar’s cargo storage bay and towards Master Luke’s hut. Her fingers twitch as she thinks about running them over the collection of parts Luke had shown her, the ones he told her she’d have her pick of once the Force had guided her to her crystals.

It’s only a handful of minutes later and she’s knocking on the door to Luke’s quarters, breathing hard from the breakneck pace she’d set in her hurry to get there. Master Skywalker answers quickly, giving her a knowing grin when she makes a beeline to the rough hewn workbench in the corner where the parts and materials are all spread out. It shows either how well Luke has come to know her or how easy she is to read that he doesn’t try to engage her in any conversation.

Luke, as well as the more advanced knights in the Order, had been welding and forging various parts in preparation for the handful of padawans that would be making their weapons in the next few months, the table nearly overflowing with boxes and bins of saber components. Rey was understandably quite interested in the process, given her scavenging background, and had helped out a few times herself. The parts were a mix of reverse engineering from the few sabers Luke had available and modifications of the blueprints and schematics Luke had found in some old holocrons.

Her fingers rifle over and through the parts, looking for pieces that echo the design in her head, modeled heavily after her beloved quarterstaff. Twin emitters, switches, hilts, and a long durasteel rod are quickly and efficiently chosen, Rey following the pull in her gut when a particular part catches her eye or when her mechanic’s intuition leads her to pick one component over another. Once she has all the pieces that will make up the body of her weapon, Luke points her towards another box that houses the fragile inner components, a slew of intricate and expensive pieces of technology. The ex-scavenger in her is practically drooling at the sight. You can take the girl out of the deserts of Jakku, but you can’t take the deserts of Jakku out of her, or so it would seem.

She collects the rest of the materials she needs and packs it all carefully in her bag, wrapping up the delicate parts in some fabric scraps she had brought along and carrying the long piece of metal as she thanks Luke and moves to go.

“You know what you need to do first, padawan?” he asks as he’s opening the door for her.

Rey nods; it isn’t as though she hasn’t been preparing for this moment since her first day at the academy. “Meditate with the crystals, find any imperfections, and calculate their ideal alignment.”

“An answer straight from the holocron, Rey,” Luke chuckles. “You’ll do spectacularly. Just don’t rush it, or get impatient. Don’t be disappointed when you don’t get it on the first try. We have quite the store of extra parts here, so just come back when you need new ones. May the Force be with you.”

Rey inclines her head respectfully to the master and heads back out into the village. She’s more than ready to start working on her weapon right away, planning to head down the river a bit to meditate over the crystals for the rest of the morning and afternoon if needed.

What Luke had said confused her a bit, though - would she really not be able to complete the weapon on her first try? She’s a mechanic, a tinkerer, and she knows her way around the Force almost as well as she does around the circuits of a hyperdrive.

Really, he’d probably just said it so that she didn’t get overconfident. She knew it wouldn’t be instantaneous, and that it more than likely wouldn’t be completed all in one day, but surely replacement parts wouldn’t be necessary. Rey could be patient, and she certainly could be persistent (Ben would probably call it _stubborn_ ), so really there shouldn’t be a problem with her being successful on her first try - right?

 

* * *

 

 

Well, really Rey supposes she shouldn’t be surprised. Master Skywalker had warned her this might happen, and she’d done exactly the opposite of what he’d told her to do, so it was probably only natural that she was left with one shorted-out, half melted saber.

This is what she got for being overeager and rushing through things - she should have known better than to take shortcuts with the modulation circuits. It was basic stuff, really, so basic that she had to restrain herself from an open-palmed slap to her forehead. When had she gotten so sloppy?

She could trace it back, though. The picture of her weapon had been so clear in her mind, so tangible, that it has distracted her from what was actually physically in front of her. A foolish and rookie mistake, but she knew it wasn’t the end of the galaxy. She could, and would, be back at it tomorrow with a better idea of what she was doing.

She hadn’t even started on the second saber - she’d need to get replacement parts from Luke tomorrow anyway. She wasn’t exactly looking forward to that conversation with the master. He would never go so far as to actually say something like _I told you so_ , but he got this little twinkle in his eye and the tiniest grin at one corner of his mouth that said it all and then some. Probably she deserved it, but that didn’t make the sting of embarrassment any less. She wondered if Ben would be more or less easy on her than Luke - he’d either go full sympathy or full (good-natured) mockery. He generally didn’t do things by halves.

It had all started out fine - she’d slipped into meditation quickly and seamlessly, one crystal nestled into each of her upturned palms. As she’d focused on them, channeled the Force into the colorless shards, they’d started to float just above her skin and pulse with the faintest glow. Her pulse had picked up the tiniest bit, but she quickly dampened it down with her meditation techniques. Focus. She had to be a conduit between the Force and the crystals, and conduits didn’t get butterflies in their stomachs like an overeager youngling balancing their first stone in the air.

She’d waited, feeling the Force flow into the crystals and keeping the image of her completed saber in her mind. Time was always fuzzy when she was in that kind of state, but it seemed she’d been at it for hours when she started feeling the faintest tendril of impatience at the edge of her consciousness.

What she could assume were hours (but really, could have been minutes or seconds) slipped by, and she could feel the crystals growing warmer and pulsing louder, something she could sense but not quite hear or see. Her confidence grew, perhaps too quickly now that she looked back on it - and looked down at the mess of slag in front of her.

Rey had reached with the Force for the parts laid out in front of her, things coming together as she’d planned until suddenly - they weren’t. A few parts weren’t fitting together right, and she’d done all she could to keep the furrow of frustration off her brow as she tried a few different options for connecting the circuits to the length adjustment pieces. After what had seemed like every possible connection she could think of didn’t work, something finally clicked, and then started emitting a sickly black smoke, and then erupted in a small burst of white-hot flame that made her glad she’d thrown up a protective bubble around her work as Ben had suggested.

There was no recovering the delicate circuitry or tiny parts that had been melted in the fire, although the crystals would be fine. Her pride was bruised, but it would heal a lot better than melted durasteel ever would. She felt a brief flash of frustration almost as bright as the inadvertent flames from a few moments past, but it was gone quickly as she did a breathing exercise reflexively.

Still crestfallen, she dug through the remnants to salvage what little she could of the parts and cradling the crystals gently as she rubs off the soot and returns them to the bag. A silly gesture, as they’d just survived a flame hot enough to melt metal, but they just _felt_ like they needed to be respected. Rey shoved the mess back into her bag and headed back to her quarters, head held high, if maybe a few centimeters less than usual. She’d be back at it, as soon as she’d done some recalculations. No sweat.

  
That had been days ago. Almost four days to the hour, in fact, and she had a strange sense of deja vu as she grimaced at the latest kriff-up before her on the grass. It was time to face facts. Rey needed more help with this, engineer and capable Force-user or not. If there was one thing she was still extremely stubborn with, it was letting go of her independence when it came to solving a problem. Conversely, if there was one thing she’d be _willing_ to do that for, it’d be finally having her own lightsaber.

 

* * *

 

 

She goes to Luke again with the broken saber in hand, shame coursing through her veins at yet another failure. Determinedly, she tells herself that she is  _ not _ going to walk into his quarters with her proverbial tail between her legs in defeat - once she’s actually knocking at his door though, she realizes that that’s going to be yet another failure on her part.

Master Skywalker opens the door, taking in the crushed expression on her face and the broken hilt in her hands, and wordlessly ushers her inside and into one of the armchairs in his sitting room. Luke bustles in the kitchenette for a few minutes, not saying anything to Rey who sits stock-still trying not to mope in a cloud of self-depreciation and absentmindedly picking at a singed piece of leather on the destroyed saber. 

The bearded man returns with two steaming mugs of tea, handing one to Rey for which she utters a quiet  _ thank you, master _ , before he settles down in the chair opposite her. He gives her a knowingly sympathetic smile and nods towards the broken hilt. “So, what was the issue this time?”

“What  _ wasn’t _ the issue this time, more like,” she starts with a humourless laugh. “The ignition was sputtery, one side wasn’t fitting in the coupler properly, and when I tired to fix it... well, I guess my emotions got the better of me and in my frustration I just, uh, broke it the rest of the way,” Rey mumbles, eyes trained to the ground. “I’m sorry, Master Luke. I know I need to focus harder and it was wrong of me to let my anger get the better of me. I’ll try harder next time.”

Rey looks up at Luke then, unsurprised to see his eyes devoid of any kind of disappointment or anger with her mistakes. She always wonders how he manages to stay so  _ calm _ , or perhaps if he’s just highly skilled at not showing anything outwardly. Either way, sometimes his placidity made her irrationally frustrated, like it was threatening to do right now. She thinks in some ways it would almost make her feel better if he just let her have it, admonish her for her carelessness and mistakes. Maybe it’s what she deserves, but it isn’t what he’s going to give her and they both know it.

“Rey, I’m not sure why you’re apologizing to  _ me _ when we’ve discussed how building a lightsaber is a deeply personal task, unique to each Jedi who undertakes it,” Luke begins, voice tranquil and steady.

The padawan considers that for a moment, thinking about whether it was now necessary to apologize for  _ apologizing _ , or if that would just make things worse. The whole situation was making her head hurt, and she just wanted to go back to her quarters, flop down into her bed, and hide under her blankets. She didn’t even care how cowardly it sounded anymore. This whole thing was starting to get the best of her in a way few things ever had before. 

“I guess I just feel like I’m failing you and the rest of the order when I can’t do what I need to do in order to become a Knight,” she admits, eyes flitting to the floor when she’s no longer able to hold his almost too-understanding gaze. 

Luke holds out his flesh-and-blood hand for the hilt then, and Rey gives the misshapen, partially melted thing over to him without any hesitation. Good riddance. He turns it around in his hands, unscrewing a panel to access the innards and examine how the different components are slotted together. The ex-scavenger tries not to squirm as he evaluates her work - her  _ failure _ \- and she nervously gulps down some of her tea, nearly burning her throat her in haste to ground herself. 

“You picked up on the fact that it was an issue with the crystals’ alignments, I’m assuming?” Luke asks, and Rey gives him quick nod of agreement. She _had_ picked up on that, pretty quickly. It didn’t mean she had known how to fix it though, as was clearly evidenced by the twisted piece of technology the master was currently holding. “You’re so close, padawan. Other than the damage that appears to have been inflicted when you tried to... shall we say, _fix_ it, everything appears to be put together with startling accuracy and precision. You’re a brilliant young woman, Rey, very capable and strong in mind, body, and the Force,” he says earnestly, and Rey feels her cheeks heating a bit at the praise. “I wouldn’t have chosen you as a candidate for knighthood if I didn’t think it was within your grasp. Surely you know that. You’re not letting me or anyone else down by struggling with this. It’s an immensely difficult task. If it wasn’t, don’t you think anyone who could get their hands on some parts would be running around with a lightsaber?” the older man finishes with a wry smile. He had a very valid point, as always. 

“Yes, Master Skywalker. I just... I didn’t think it would be this  _ hard _ ,” Rey sighs, shaking her head and taking another sip of her tea. Luke sets the ruined lightsaber on the side table and leans forward to rest a reassuring hand on her shoulder briefly. 

“Take as long as you need to do this, Rey. Building your saber is more about the _process_ than the product, and believe me that you certainly aren’t the first to have a few... mishaps along the way to creating your perfect weapon. A little failure goes a long way towards character building,” he says with a chuckle. “Once it’s done, you’ll know it was all worth it, and you’ll come out of the experience a stronger, more self-aware, and more centered Jedi. I have a feeling it won’t be much longer for you, and your saberstaff will be quite the sight to behold,” Luke finishes, a grin coming over his face with the last few words.

Rey offers her own small smile, surprised at how much better she’s feeling after speaking with Luke. In some ways, she had expected this meeting to make her feel even worse, to intensify the sting of failure, but the the familiar steady burn of determination is already flaring up inside of her again. She should have never let it go out, really. It’s good for her to hear that she isn’t the only one to have a hard time with this. Even though she had always known it must be the case, the idea hadn’t been an easy thing to absorb until now when she’s hearing it first-hand from her master. 

Sensing the meeting is finished, she stands and gives a small nod of respect to the bearded Jedi. “Thank you for your time and your encouraging words, Master,” she says as she moves to leave.

“It’s always a pleasure, Rey. I wish you the best of luck with the saber, and may the Force be with you,” he says with a air of finality, standing up himself to show her out of his quarters. Rey casts one last longing glance at the failed saber attempt, still lying on the table looking broken and forlorn, as she says goodbye to Luke and thanks him again.

_ Tomorrow _ , she thinks as she strides back to her quarters _ , tomorrow will be the day _ .


	2. Chapter 2

On the fourth attempt, Rey starts to question her sanity in regards to actually taking on this task in the first place. She had left Luke’s quarters yesterday determined that she’d be able to complete her saber tomorrow. Well, tomorrow was now today, and she wasn’t feeling any closer to completing her weapon than she had two weeks ago.

Maybe that was unfair, because she had come very close on yesterday’s try - even Master Skywalker had said so - and she thinks she has the techniques down and the schematics cemented firmly in her brain now. It was hard to convince herself that she’d really made any real  _ progress _ when she had absolutely nothing to show for it, though; unless she counted the three disfigured hilts in Luke’s possession, the evidence of her failed attempts thus far, all broken and twisted in their own special way. She certainly wasn’t going to consider them to be any sort of progress, though, because truthfully she didn’t even want to _ think _ about them.

Rey is strong in the Force, Master Luke and Ben have said so repeatedly. She’s a great mechanic, able to fix almost any ship or vehicle - and for that she doesn’t need anyone’s validation other than her own - although many have commended her for her skills anyway. Not to inflate her own ego, but Rey knows she’s smart and resourceful and all-around a quick study. So why, for Forcesakes, couldn’t she put this kriffing lightsaber together?

She thought she had done everything right today. She’d picked a great meditation spot - a small meadow near the lake about fifteen minutes’ walk from the temple, quiet and peaceful and away from the too-busy hum of the Force near the village. Her breakfast had been large, so that she’d be able to meditate all day and into the night if needed without being overly distracted by hunger. The materials and parts had been meticulously cleaned and inspected the night before, carefully packed into her shoulder bag and neatly arranged on the mat she had brought for her workspace. Rey could only come to the conclusion that the problem here was  _ her _ .

Settled into her meditation pose, she takes a deep and cleansing breath, pushing out all outside thoughts and distractions as the Force floods her awareness. It’s a beautiful day, but she doesn’t let herself focus on the birdsong, the warm breeze, or the faint smell of blooming flowers around her, setting her concentration completely to the task at hand. 

In her mind, she forms an image of her perfect weapon. She imagines each minute detail of the saber, from the exact location of the ignition switches to the precise alignment of the twin crystals. The hilt turns and spins slowly, Rey examining and prodding it from every angle in her mind’s eye. Once the vision is so solid she swears she can actually  _ feel _ the physical weight and heft of it in her hands, she extends her focus outside of herself to the parts arranged carefully on the small tarp in front of her.

First, she hones in on the kyber crystals, faintly pulsing with light. Oh so carefully, she pokes and prods at their presence in the Force, feeling around the shape and weight of them in her mind so she can get the alignment just right. Something feels off though, and just as she’s about to set the first crystal in its mount, a large dragonfly lands on her forehead and her concentration breaks. 

For a split second, she’s tempted to brutally murder the interrupting insect with a quick swat or a pulse of the Force, but she takes a deep breath through her nose instead, slowly reaching up to flick the bug away instead. She settles back in to refocus her mind, calming her body’s response to the outrage of being disrupted at a pivotal moment.  _ Push it all out with the Force _ , she chants in her head, the silent mantra holding her frustration at bay for now. Again, Rey narrows her consciousness down to the equipment in front of her, vision of her weapon once again clear in her mind, and she picks up where she had left off. 

The first shard slides smoothly and satisfyingly into the mount, and Rey gently lowers it back to the mat to work with the rest of the crystal’s housing. She’s just finishing the fusing of the activator to the energy chamber when she’s rudely disturbed again, nearly dropping the delicate parts the few feet down to the ground in being caught unawares. She’s not sure if it’s the same damn dragonfly or a new one sent to torture her, but this time her fingers twitch to squish its tiny insect guts as she forces herself to brush it away gently.

Gritting her teeth, she attempts to focus again, but dismay quickly fills her as she realizes the perfect and balanced calm she’d achieved has shattered, taking her grip on the Force along with it. She tries again and again to re-center herself, growing more frantic with each attempt as disappointment and self-resentment begins to churn in her stomach.

 

* * *

 

Rey doesn’t think she’s ever felt this frustrated in her entire life. Her concentration slips right out of her grasp, like grains of sand through the cracks between her fingers. Hot, angry tears prick at the corners of her eyes, which somehow just makes everything even worse. She’s going to be a Jedi  _ Knight _ , dammit, and she won’t let this beat her. She hangs on to every scrap of stubbornness that she possesses to keep herself from crying, because she knows once the tears start to spill, she’ll need to step away from her task for the day. 

She had been so certain, so  _ determined _ , that today would be the day she would finally finish her saber, finally be able to hold the beautiful twin blade she’d be envisioning and feel it thrum with energy under her palms. Her lungs expand and contract with a few deep breaths, meant to be cleansing but in reality doing little to nothing for her exasperated state. She lets out a shaky sigh and finally resigns herself to having to try again tomorrow, pushing somewhat ineffectually at the curl of self-doubt that threatens to swamp her. 

Standing up from her meditative pose, she stretches her arms above her head briefly, working out the kinks that came with holding the cross-legged position for so long. Each saber component gets picked up, wrapped, and packed away with care, Rey wanting to keep these parts intact after she’d already broken three other sets. Even if Master Skywalker said it was normal for a padawan to make several unsuccessful attempts at their first saber, the scavenger in her still felt very remorseful at wasting all those perfectly good and very valuable materials with her embarrassing ineptitude.

Leaves suddenly crunch behind her, a twig snapping underfoot, and she’s about to whip her head around to see who has come to disturb her until a familiar Force presence nestles up against her own. She doesn’t need to turn to sense who it is approaching today’s meditation spot, then. 

“Giving up for the day already?” a baritone voice drifts from her left, coming closer with the confident, striding steps she would recognize anywhere. 

Rey still doesn’t turn around as she responds, although she can feel he’s only a few paces away from her. “Yes, and I’m not in the mood to talk about it right now,” she bites out, perhaps a little too harshly. It wasn’t like her personal failure was  _ his _ fault, but it’s hard not to lash out when she’s feeling the way she is at the moment, anger and shame and frustration bubbling up under her skin and threatening to overflow at any moment. “Why are you here anyway? You knew I was going to be working on this today,” she asks.

There’s no response, and she starts to turn around to repeat herself, a frown tugging at one corner of her mouth. A little huff of surprise and indignation escapes from her lips when she feels a pair of overly-long arms wrap around her from behind, soft hair tickling her neck as Ben leans down to plant a kiss in the hollow underneath her left ear. “I felt how exasperated you were getting and I thought you could use a break or some moral support,” the tall man mumbles into her ear, punctuating the statement with a nuzzle.

Even as mad as she is, she can’t help but relax back into the touch, their bond flaring up comfortingly at the skin-to-skin contact between them. “Well, it doesn’t look like you blew anything up or started anything on fire, so it must not have been too bad of a day,” Ben teases, breath warm on her neck before she wiggles out of his grasp and moves a step back to face him.

_ So much for being “morally supportive”, you ass,  _ she thinks at him, her mental voice a displeased hiss. She crosses her arms in front of her, mood evident in the set of her shoulders and the scowl on her face. Ben’s mocking sense of humor is definitely not welcome at the moment.

The dark-haired man’s eyes widen and he holds his hands up in front of himself in surrender, letting out a short laugh as he says, “whoa, okay! I didn’t mean it like -- shit. Sorry, I guess that was the wrong thing to say, wasn’t it?”

Rey gives him a brutal glare for an answer, eyes shooting daggers at the knight before she turns back to the half-packed satchel of saber parts, wrapping up the crystals and the fragile focusing lenses carefully before setting them inside her bag. “Look, I’m sorry for taking it out on you, but I just really thought that today would be the day,” she mutters, taking a deep breath and letting out some of the frustration she’d been holding in unwillingly. 

Ben approaches the bag on the ground and helps her finish cleaning up her things, giving her a tentative smile and reaching out to clasp one large hand over her bicep, squeezing her arm reassuringly. Rey tries to smile back, but it comes out closer to a grimace. She shoulders the now-full bag, shaking her head as she fights back the tears that had sprung to her eyes again at her partner’s comforting gesture.

“I don’t know, Ben. Maybe this is just a sign that I’m not meant to be a knight after all,” she blurts out dejectedly.

The dark-haired man gives her an incredulous look. “Rey, what are you talking about? So you’re having a little trouble with getting the saber put together -- big deal, almost everyone does. You’ll get there, I know you will,” Ben says earnestly.

“That’s easy for  _ you _ to say. Practically everyone in your family is incredibly strong with the Force, and you’ve been training since before I was even  _ born _ , Ben. I can’t imagine you’d know all that much about struggling to become a knight,” Rey grits out, not able to keep the bitterness out of her voice. 

Ben may be a lot of things - stubborn, overconfident, short-tempered, to name a few - but there was actually a reason he was such a cocky bastard. He was ridiculously good at the whole Jedi thing, and he knew it. His power with the Force is surpassed only by Master Luke - and perhaps Rey on a particularly good day, she’s proud to admit. Rey doesn’t think Ben understands her difficulties as much as he claims to, with the way everything seems to come so naturally to him. She appreciates the effort he’s going through to try and make her feel better, really - but she isn’t in the mood for a pep-talk at the moment, at least not from someone who had it so much easier than her most of the time.

For a moment, the tall man visibly bristles after the words leave Rey’s mouth. A flicker of something like anger crosses over Ben’s features, but it’s quickly replaced by a softer emotion and he shakes his head as though he’s dislodging an unwanted thought. He sighs and takes her pack to set it down in a safe place, gently reaches an arm around her waist, then guides her over to a grassy spot by the lakeshore and pulls her down to sit next to him. “I think it’s about time I told you some things about myself, Rey,” Ben starts, eyes staring off towards the lake and voice oddly quiet. “Partly because I want you to know that I do understand your situation more than you think I do, and partly because -- well, you mean a lot to me, and I think these are things you probably deserve to know.” 

The knight pauses then, and reaches down to intertwine her fingers with his own. She hears him take a deep breath and feels a coil of nervousness from him through their bond. He opens his mouth to speak, then seems to think better of it and Rey hears his voice instead her mind instead.


	3. Chapter 3

 

_ One of my first memories, when I was maybe about two or three years old, is waking up from a nightmare screaming. I remember my mom and dad rushing into my room and my dad picking me up.  _ Through his mind’s eye, Rey can see the scene clearly. In the small bedroom, things had been knocked off the walls, toys had been thrown all around the room, and Ben’s mother looked absolutely terrified. _ Later, I realized I had done all of that with the Force, a totally uncontrolled surge of power _ , he elaborates. 

_ I kept having those nightmares, although I can’t ever remember what exactly happened in them. There was always a voice, though, and it told me all kinds of awful things.  _ At this, Rey feels Ben shiver involuntarily at the memory and she moves closer to him, pressing her side against his own comfortingly as she grows more concerned about what he’s telling her. _ As I got older, I started to understand what the voice was saying to me. Sometimes, it told me horrible things, that I would never live up to my parents’ expectations, that I wouldn’t ever be strong enough or good enough to be a Jedi, that I would grow up unloved and with nowhere I belonged. Sometimes, though, the things it said were different: that I was extremely powerful, that I could become as great as my grandfather, that I was better than any of my classmates or friends. I didn’t know how to feel or who to turn to about what I was hearing, and I was equal parts terrified, overwhelmed, and entranced. _

_ It was around the time I turned five that Luke started to train me.  _ The mental image in the knight’s mind shifts, and Rey sees a young Luke Skywalker as Ben had viewed him through his five-year-old eyes: clean-shaven, handsome, and gallant, the image colored with his nephew’s obvious and open admiration.  _ He sensed something was wrong and started asking me about the nightmares. When I told him about the voice, I think it was the most frightened I’ve ever seen Luke in my entire life. We started the mind shielding training right away, and things slowly but surely got better. The voice stopped getting through when I was about nine, and the next year I came to the academy here. It still had an... effect on me, though. _

“So this voice belonged to a real person, you think?” Rey asks hesitantly. 

Ben turns to her, a haunted look in his eyes. He clears his throat and speaks out loud this time. “Yes. We were never sure exactly who - or maybe  _ what _ \- it was, but Luke thinks it was an extremely powerful dark side Force user, possibly the leader of whatever organization is working with the First Order now.”

The padawan’s eyes widen in shock. “Whoever it was tried to turn you to the dark side - and they started when you were  _ two  _ years old?”

He nods with a grimace and runs a shaky hand through his hair. Rey can see reliving these memories is not an easy thing for the knight, and she sends a wave of affection to him over their bond, not sure how else she can help. 

“For a while, things were fine. My mental shields were very strong considering how young I was, and I had the support and understanding of my family. I didn’t hear anything else from the voice for quite a few years. I did sometimes have some strange thoughts, dark things that would pop into my head and didn’t feel like they were coming from me.” Ben pauses again, and Rey glances over to see him struggling with his next words. “When I was fifteen... things got messy. My parents were fighting and for a while it seemed like they weren’t going to ever make up. There were some students at the academy I didn’t get along with, a few that accused me of only getting into the academy because of who my family was, that I wasn’t good enough on my own merit. 

I felt angry all the time, out of control, and my shields slipped up more often than not. The voice came back and told me I was wasting my time with the Jedi, that I was better than my peers, better than Luke, and I could do so much more with the dark side of the Force.”

Ben grimaces and shakes his head. “I’m not -- these are things I’m not proud of, Rey, but I started practicing with the dark side shortly after that. My emotions were out of control with everything that was going on, and when I got angry the dark side came so easily, and it felt like... nothing you could ever imagine.” Rey feels Ben suddenly clamp down on something in his mind, shutting her out of it through their bond. She catches the smallest fleeting glimpse of it before it’s locked away; a swirl of heady dark power coursing through his hand, outstretched like a claw. “I’m sorry, I just -- once you feel it, it will haunt you forever. I’d never wish that on anyone, especially not you. It’s always there, tempting, and sometimes it’s so hard not to reach out for it,” he finishes with another full-body shiver. 

“Luke caught on pretty quickly to what was happening. He sent me back to stay with my mother for a couple of months, and my dad came home soon after I’d gotten there and worked things out with my mom again. It was easier to control my anger away from the academy, and Luke visited pretty often to check up on me and work on with me on shielding and techniques to stay in control of my emotions. It was a tough time, and for a while it looked like it might be the end of my Jedi training.” Rey’s brows fly up and she looks over at Ben, surprised. He sees her expression and lets out a chuckle. “Yeah, it was that bad. In the end, we kind of all decided it would be best if I returned to the academy, but Luke would be keeping a really close watch on me.”

“And then you came back here to train and became a knight when you were... what, twenty?” Rey asks, trying to remember what Ben had told her about earning his knighthood. Now that she thought about it, she couldn’t remember him ever wanting to say much about that time in his life, and suddenly it made perfect sense why.

Ben gives her a small, lopsided smile. “Yes, and this is part of the reason I wanted to bring this all up in the first place. Becoming a knight wasn’t a quick or easy thing for me. Luke and I started discussing the possibility when I was seventeen, but he kept holding me back when it became clear again and again that I still didn’t have the best handle on my emotions or dealing with temptations towards the dark side. It was frustrating, to say the least, but I wanted it more badly than anything. I worked on my saber for three months before it came together,” he laughs, giving her a pointed look. “So I don’t want to hear you complain about not having it done after two and a half weeks.”

“ _ Three months? _ Why didn’t you mention this before?” Rey asks incredulously. 

Ben shrugs and gives her a sheepish look. “Because I didn’t want you to laugh at me,” he admits. Rey opens her mouth to respond, but the knight holds up a hand to silence her. “Don’t even say that you wouldn’t have laughed, Rey, because I  _ know _ you. I’ll admit it took much longer than I would have liked and I definitely had some pretty spectacular failures along the way. But, to my credit, I was making a difficult and highly intricate design and it was very touchy getting the side emitters just right.”

“Yeah, I guess I probably would have laughed at you a little if you had told me earlier,” she teases, leaning into Ben’s side and letting a chuckle escape her lips. “But now, knowing everything else...  _ shit _ , Ben I’m sorry for just assuming that you always had it easy. That wasn’t fair of me to do.”

“No, you don’t need to apologize. It’s not like you could have known - I keep that stuff buried way, way deep,” he says, tapping a finger against his temple. With their bond, they obviously knew each other exceedingly well, but they still made sure to respect each other’s privacy and didn’t dig into memories or thoughts without permission - so If Ben kept those experiences tucked far away in the corner of his mind, there was no reason she ever would have stumbled upon them by accident. 

“Really, the only people who know about the whole...  _ dark side _ ordeal are Luke and my parents. I suppose the other students that were here when I started acting strangely and then suddenly disappeared for a few months probably figured something was going on, and obviously there’s the whole purple crystal thing, and people take that as they will.”

Ben pulls his lightsaber off of his belt clip then, hefting the weight of the crossguard hilt in his hand. Rey looks at it with a pang of jealousy - oh, how badly she wants to feel the hilt of her  _ own _ weapon under her palms. “I’ve always wondered a bit about the color, since yours is the only purple one I’ve ever seen. What does it mean?” she asks, curiosity getting the better of her. 

The weapon ignites in Ben’s hand with a loud hum and a vibrant beam of violet, the main blade emitted a split second before the two smaller ones on the quillions. Ben turns it over in his hand, blade gently buzzing as it shifts through the air. “Yes, I suppose it is a very rare color, purple. There’s a few different interpretations about what this blade says about the wielder - that they fight aggressively and are strong physically and with the Force. A lot of Jedi considered it as a mix between a red saber and a blue one, though, and for many that was the strongest association with purple saber,” he says, staring contemplatively at the arcs he cuts through the air as with the weapon he speaks.

Something clicks in Rey’s mind, then. “Oh -- red, like the lightsabers the Sith used?” she asks, words slow and somewhat hesitant as the pieces shift into place in her mind and various history lectures from the temple come flooding back to her. She looks over at Ben, and he gives a sharp nod, eyes still trained on the purple blade. “So, it’s a mix between dark and light, then. I feel kind of silly for not realizing that before.”

“Well, I’m the only Jedi with a purple saber at the moment, and they weren’t exactly commonplace even in the time before the purge,” Ben explains. “Plus, I think Luke is probably the only living Jedi that’s ever even seen a Sith’s red saber, so it isn’t as though the rest of us have a strong association with red crystals and the dark side.” 

Everything he’s saying makes sense to Rey, but she still feels on some level that if this was such a fundamental part of Ben - her partner, lover, and friend - somehow she should have  _ known _ . It doesn’t change the way she feels about him, but there’s no way she could learn something like that about the knight and not have it shift the way she sees him, at least a little bit. If anything, the new angle seems to make her respect him more - for facing and overcoming the temptation of the dark side, and for becoming a knight after three years of struggling towards it.

The dark-haired man powers down his blade and the meadow suddenly seems very quiet without the crackling hum of the saber. He clips it back onto his belt, and the silence between them stretches on for a couple of minutes.

_ Ben _ , Rey starts suddenly over their bond,  _ do you still feel... tempted sometimes? _

He turns to her, dark eyes boring into her own as he responds.  _ Nearly every day _ . There’s no hesitation in his mental voice, only a grim honesty.  _ It’s manageable, though. I have no desire to leave the Jedi, but I accepted a long time ago that the dark side is as much a part of me as the light side is. I can chose which path I want to take, but I can’t change who I am. _

“I wouldn’t ever want you to change who you are, Ben.” She turns to him and grabs his face in both her hands, pulling his lips to hers for a kiss. The tall man is quick to respond as he wraps his arms around her waist and hauls her over and into his lap. She settles against him with her legs bracketing his thighs, and Ben deepens the kiss until his tongue is warm and soft against hers in Rey’s mouth. She pulls back reluctantly, knowing that once the two of them got started it quickly became almost impossible to stop. “I wouldn’t even change the fact that it took you  _ three whole kriffing months _ to make your lightsaber,” she whispers into his ear, holding back a laugh for all of two seconds before it bursts forth. 

Ben squawks in indignation, grabbing her wrists and swiftly rolling them over until he’s on top of her, pinning her to the grass as she laughs herself breathless. “You little shit, Rey! This is  _ exactly _ why I didn’t tell you, because I kriffing knew you would rub it in!” 

“Oh come on, Ben, I’m just giving you shit to make myself feel better in comparison to your ineptitude,” she giggles out. The knight growls in response and leans down to nip at that spot on her neck that he  _ knows _ is extremely ticklish, which only makes her howl harder with mirth as she tries to squirm away from him. “Oh my Force, you're going to leave a huge mark!  _ Bennnnn _ , stop it, I'm never going to be able to cover that up!”

He pulls back to look straight at her, panting heavily and eyes wild with some mostly-unreadable emotion. “Fucking serves you right for ridiculing me, Rey,” he quips with a smirk. 

_ You know I don't actually think any less of you for that, right?  _ she pushes into his mind, and he snorts out a laugh in response. Through their bond he knows exactly how she feels, and in turn she can sense how relieved he is to have gotten everything off his chest and that Rey had been so accepting of all of it. 

Ben nods and leans down to capture her lips with his, and Rey bites at his bottom lip none-too-gently in retaliation for the huge and obvious bruise he had sucked into her neck. She already knew the type of looks she'd be getting in the mess hall this evening. 

“Okay, okay. As nice as this is, I'd rather not get another talking-to from Luke for ‘inappropriate public displays of affection’ again,” Rey says as she pulls away from Ben's mouth reluctantly, the tall man groaning in protest. He rolls off of her and stands up, offering her a hand which she uses to pull herself to her feet. “In all seriousness, thank you for sharing all of that. I'm still sorry for assuming things were never difficult for you -- not to feed into your ego, because Force knows that’s the last thing you need, but you just make it all look to infuriatingly  _ easy _ most of the time.”

Rey isn’t even a little bit surprised at the lopsided smirk that comes over his face at her words. He opens his mouth, most likely to say something incredibly cocky that  _ he _ thinks is suave or funny, but he decides better of it after seeing her already-exasperated expression. 

He shakes his head at lets out a huff of laughter before his expression shifts back to something a little more serious. “So, you thought today would be the day, huh?” he asks, eyeing the bag she’s picked back up and slung over shoulder. “You know, it’s only a few hours past midday. I don’t see any reason why you couldn’t keep working at it - the day isn’t over yet.”

The padawan sighs and shakes her head. “I don’t know, Ben, I just couldn’t focus and I thought it would be better to quit before I ended up with another catastrophic failure.”

The knight gives her a blindingly bright smile and sinks back down the ground, pulling her along with him as he settles into the standard cross-legged meditation pose. “The scrappy, resourceful, and  _ incredibly  _ stubborn ex-scavenger I know isn’t a quitter, Rey. You said it would be today, so make it today.” She can hear the determination in his voice, like an echo to the own she had felt this morning, and through the bond pulses his total and honest conviction that she  _ can _ do this. With an appreciative look, she sinks to the ground, mirrors his meditation pose and wordlessly starts to pull out the materials from her bag. “That’s my girl. Come on, finish getting the stuff unpacked and I’ll help you with the breathing exercises. Just think -- the sooner you finish it, the sooner you can kick my ass in a spar with it,” Ben says with a laugh, and Rey can’t help but grin in response. 

Ben sits with her while she slips into meditation, awareness shifting inward as her stress and frustration leak out and the Force rushes in. Her partner’s tranquil and focused presence next to her, both physically and in her mind, anchors her as he occasionally helps to nudge out a distracting worry or thought. 

Her focus honed, she reaches out with her mind for the saber parts spread out between her and Ben. They move as though lifted by invisible hands, pieces starting to slot together swiftly and precisely with the schematics solidly cemented in Rey’s mind. 

In past attempts, she had thought she’d need to tackle each of the two sabers that would make up her staff separately, building them one at a time. Now, she realizes that had been her mistake all along - they could never be perfect twins if they weren’t created together, perfectly aligned and attuned to each other and herself. It wasn’t completely necessary, of course, as she could have coupled any two sabers to make a staff; she knew, though, that the balance would be off and the perfect weapon she’d seen through her meditation would function perfectly as one seamless piece, not as two separate sabers joined together. 

In past attempts, after finishing one saber she had either gotten cocky and careless or become too worn out to complete the second one with the flawless precision that was required. She never even considered the possibility of making them simultaneously, but as it dawns on her it suddenly makes complete and perfect sense.

Something clicks and her focus splits and forks into two equal partitions. She doesn’t stop to overanalyze the intricacy or complexity of what she’s doing, knowing she’ll only shatter her concentration if she does, but instead she clears her mind of anything but the task in front of her and lets the Force work through her.

 

 

* * *

 

Rey loses track of time completely, lost in her task. At some point she is very vaguely aware of Ben’s presence receding with a farewell pulse of affectionate reassurance. Parts snap and screw together, the crystals settling in perfectly and precisely aligned. After what she can only assume is many hours later, the last pieces finally slot into place, the long coupler grip fitting smoothly and securely over the pommels of the two sabers, joining them into the long handle of a quarterstaff. She lowers the completed weapon down to the small tarp gingerly and takes one last deep breath before she lets the giddiness rush in. Before she even reaches for the ignition switch, she knows with certainty that this saber is perfectly built,  _ rightness  _ emanating off it.

Slowly and incrementally, she lets awareness of the outside world come flooding back to her. Her eyes open wide in astonishment as she realizes it’s pitch-black outside, night apparently having fallen while she was working. Her muscles scream at her from holding the same position for so long, and she feels a chilly breeze blowing against her sweat-damp skin. Her stomach protests with a grumble, and her throat feels cottony and dry. 

None of that matters. She’s completed her lightsaber, her fingers itching to reach out and touch the smooth leather-wrapped grip with her own hands.   

It’s pretty un-Jedi-like, she knows, but she wants nothing more than to run through the village with her new blade, showing it off as she laughs and yells with her ecstatic, joyful pride. She reins in the feeling just barely, settling instead for a grin so large it makes the muscles in her cheeks hurt. 

She reaches for the blade gingerly, as though it’s some fragile, delicate thing and not a weapon capable of massive amounts of destruction. The fingers of her right hand close around the grip and she pushes herself up to a standing position, ignoring the protests of her stiff muscles.

Her left hand comes up to grip the saberstaff just under the first, and she hefts the weight of it lightly, testing. An awed smile comes over her face at how perfect it feels, how perfect it  _ fits _ her. Rey holds her breath as her thumb hovers over the dual ignition switch towards the top of the long coupler grip, a small irrational part of her nagging at the back of her mind that there’s still a possibility it might not work, but she dismisses the thought as soon as it materializes. 

The anticipation is too much, and she flicks on the ignition switch before she can second guess herself. Her eyes widen in awe at the first sight of the twin blades, bright light bursting forth with a buzzing hum, illuminating the meadow and reflecting off the lake. 

She had known, with the certainty that comes through the Force, the color of the crystals as soon as she’d chosen them, when she pulled them from the crate she and Ben had brought back from Barseg. They hadn’t shown the color outwardly until the first time she’d meditated with them, coaxing out a gentle glow. Seeing the crystals and seeing the blades were enormously different things, she realized now. 

The blades shine a vibrant icy blue, their rumbling thrum perfectly synced as she takes a light, testing swing. She’s biased, she knows, but she thinks her saber might be the most breathtaking and beautiful one she’s ever seen. 

She’d modeled her weapon heavily after the trusty scrap-metal quarterstaff she’d built on Jakku; the one that had allowed to defend both her scavenged goods and, on more than a few occasions, her life. The long, silvery metal saberstaff extends a little under a meter, the black leather-wrapped coupler grip taking up just under a third of the length. For now, the leather and metal are shiny-new, but she predicts it won’t be long until they’re comfortably worn and weathered. The light blue blades themselves are adjusted to about a half a meter long each - quite short compared to the length of a standard saber, but if she ever used them for dual wielding she’d easily be able to extend their length with the knobs on either hilt.

She loves everything about it. Loves the heft of it in her grip and the smoothness of the bantha-leather under her palms, loves the utility and versatility of it, loves how imposing and intimidating the massive, blindingly bright weapon is.

She looks her fill at her creation, awe and pride and satisfaction filling her as she turns it over in her hands, extinguishes and reignites the blades, one at a time with the switches near the middle, then both simultaneously with the extra switch she’d wired just above the leather grip. 

Satisfied with looking, Rey hefts the saber in front of her, a defensive stance, and tests out a few basic exercises with her new weapon. Shadows flicker off the grass and trees as she gains confidence and quickly slips into the familiarity of forms drills with her saber, tweaking her grip and the arcs of her swings as she finds the staff’s center of balance. 

She’s exhausted, hungry and thirsty, grimy with sweat - but she loses herself in intricate steps and graceful swings, the Force ebbing and flowing through her. Once her stomach interrupts with an impatient loud grumble, she comes back to herself and reluctantly accepts that it’s past time she heads back to her quarters to scarf down a ration bar and a liter of water before passing out promptly on her cot.

Since there’s no more fragile parts to pack up and be wary of, she’s able to hastily pack up the little tarp and her bag. She notes that she’ll need to make some sort of a strap for her staff so that she’ll be able to sling it over her back, a rough schematic forming in her head as she makes the quarter hour walk back to the Jedi village. 

As she passes the little sub-compound of knight’s dwellings, she contemplates going to wake Ben to show him the staff. When she reaches out along their bond, she finds him solidly asleep and in the middle of some nebulous tranquil dream, she decides it can wait until the morning. Her partner isn’t always the best of sleepers and Force knows he needs his rest with how hard he’s been training lately. 

Finally, she makes it back to her own modest little quarters, blearily cramming a ration bar into her mouth and chugging water from her canteen as she changes into her loose sleep clothes. She slides the staff under her bed, fingers brushing over the weapon reverently one last time before her head hits the pillow and she falls into an exhausted sleep with a smile on her face.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Rey's saber](http://saberparts-dev.azurewebsites.net/Media/Share/9524135d-39bb-466d-8c88-b265d4e2f39d_5.142.0.0-7.152.9.0-1.29.1.0-2.64.1.0-3.79.3.0-10.164.3.23-3.79.3.0-2.64.1.0-1.29.1.0-7.152.9.0-5.142.0.0.jpg?r=44) as I pictured it (and had a lot of fun tinkering around on the Saberforge website putting together)
> 
> I hope you enjoyed it! It was so fun to write again after a long break. I'm hoping to get back into it once the school year is over - my first year of teaching hasn't left a lot of free time (or, more like, energy) for creative writing. Thanks for reading, and I hope to be back soon with another installment in this 'verse!


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